It is often necessary that articles, such as cylindrical articles, be moved, or conveyed, at high flow rates in order to accommodate various operations, such as, for example, those utilizing mass production machinery, and this, at least in part, has made it necessary that such articles be processed in a highly automated fashion. This has been found to be particularly the case, for example, for production or processing of thin walled cans for the containment of food or beverages where it has commonly been found to be necessary to carefully inspect each can for imperfections, either functional or structural, as well as to print and/or otherwise perform operations upon each can after formation.
As a result, it has been found to be often convenient to mass convey articles using broad belts or other conveying means capable of concurrently conveying the articles randomly or possibly in transverse rows. However, for a number of required processing operations, such as inspecting and/or treating, for example, of such articles, it has been found necessary that the articles be single lined, or filed, in order that the articles are thereafter moved in a single file arrangement so that each may be sequentially presented to the various operations.
A typical example of known single lining, or filing, devices is to be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,229, issued Feb. 19, 1985. In this device, cans at a single filing area are urged in various directions including toward a peripheral curved guide barrier by air injected through apertures in spaced plates with further apertures being provided to urge cans along the guide barrier through the single lining area. The device and method of this invention facilitates single filing apparatus such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,229.